JNGD 15 Flight Plan: Hey Baby Let’s Go To Vegas

After a strong game in Dallas to keep the points streak alive, and then a day off and some practice time in Nevada, The Jets become the first Canadian team to make a visit to Las Vegas be it pre or regular season as they take on the Golden Knights tonight in Sin City.

Vegas has already had visits from popular original six clubs such as Boston, Detroit and Chicago and have had to deal with having a home rink partly filled with fans dedicated to long storied franchises. Now Vegas gets to experience life with a Canadian fan base visiting, all too happy to root their team on and happy to be out of sub-arctic temperatures. By the looks of things, it looks like Jets fans will be out in full force tonight.

Jets Regular Season Game #15

Winnipeg Jets (8-3-3)@Vegas Golden Knights (9-5-1)

Recently for the Jets…

Winners of four of their last five and having collected points in the standings in their last eight games, the Jets are starting to turn some heads around the hockey world. Their last game was a very impressive 4-1 road win in Dallas that gave the club some good feelings and reasons to enjoy their next few days in Las Vegas. The pair of Mark Scheifele and Blake Wheeler continue to dominate as Mark added two more goals and an assist to his season totals while Blake was involved in every scoring play the Jets had with four helpers – all of them also being primary assists. Connor Hellebuyck continued his string of undefeated play as he stopped 33 of 34 shots faced. He will again get the starting nod tonight in Vegas

Recently for the Golden Knights…

The Knights’ first real road trip ever out to the east coast was a tough one for them as they closed it out with a 3-2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday. They finished that trip going 1-4-1 but to be fair the last four games were decided by one goal and Vegas played well through all of them. The Knights after a super hot start going 8-2-0 in their first ten games may be coming back down to earth now, but they will remain a tough team to play all season.

Recently between both teams…

This is the first meeting ever between both clubs ever – the first of four games the teams will play against each other this season – so if we are going to dig for a “recently between the two teams” bit, then let’s remember to back this summer and the Vegas Expansion Draft. Faced with the prospect of losing someone like Tobias Enstrom, or Marko Dano, or Adam Lowry, or Joel Armia the Jets convinced Knights GM George McPhee to take Chris Thorburn who was about a week away from becoming an unrestricted free agent in exchange for the Jets first round 13th overall pick. Solid deal right? Only the Knights also sent the 24th overall pick they got from Columbus to Winnipeg in that deal. It was a nice bit of trickery from Kevin Cheveldayoff to protect his current assets and still come out with a decent first round draft pick.

Gameday Prediction…

Vegas has been a fun story so far this season but between the unfortunate string of injuries they’ve had to deal with and teams now having video of how this Gerard Gallant coached team plays, they are coming back down to reality. meanwhile, the last thing the Jets want is to be accused of taking it easy in Vegas for three days and get ambushed by VGK, so expect Winnipeg to come out gunning early and coast to a 6-3 win.